Monday night NC State found itself in a tough spot, down 18 points to Texas on a neutral floor. Things looked hopeless. The Wolfpack started the second half with CJ Leslie going 1-2 from the foul line before proceeding to turn the ball over on both ensuing possessions. Meanwhile Texas continued laying waste to the Wolfpack defense, scoring nine points on its first four possessions. After a miniature comeback was stymied by J’Covan Brown and Julien Lewis the lead was back to 18, and Mark Gottfried called a timeout for his Wolfpack with 11:37 remaining in the game.
J'Covan Brown's Untimely Display of Immaturity Let NC State Back into the Game.
Another aspect that deserves mention is the officiating. The officials clearly wanted to rein in the physicality of the first half (which didn’t seem over-the-top at the time), and had been calling the opening of the second half extremely tight. Unfortunately for the Longhorns, most of those fouls went against them. NC State was already in the bonus less than four minutes into the half. In the first four minutes of that half, the officials had called ten fouls (they called 51 fouls for the game). Despite the chippiness, Texas was still in control until J’Covan Brown was called for his fourth foul with 8:25 left, yelled at the ref, and summarily fouled out on the resultant technical. In less than ten seconds the momentum of the game totally changed.
NC State was already on a small 5-0 run at the time of Brown’s outburst. Within two minutes the run had exploded to 17-1. By the under-four timeout, Mark Gottfried’s squad had seized control of the game with a 28-2 run. The craziest thing about it: Texas head coach Rick Barnes never called a timeout. He watched an 18-point lead morph into an eight-point deficit in a little over eight minutes and never stopped the game to calm down or inspire his troops (whichever was necessary).
For the statistically inclined, I calculated the two teams’ relative efficiencies before and after Brown fouling out. Prior to Brown’s departure, Texas was scoring at a ludicrous 1.30 points per possession (the D-I average is a little over one point per possession; anything over 1.10 is great), while NC State had only managed 1.04 points per possession (which was a significant improvement over its halftime mark of 0.97 PPP). The results after the foul are mind-boggling. For the last 16 possessions of the game, Texas only managed to score nine points (a little over 0.62 points per possession); on the other side, the Wolfpack scored a ludicrous 25 points (or 1.56 points per possession).
It’s possible NC State would have come back on Texas without Brown’s early departure (as I mentioned before, the Wolfpack were already on a small run). But the combination of NC State heating up and Texas’ offense falling to pieces without its best scorer on the floor opened the door for one of the more lopsided runs you’ll see this year between two borderline NCAA teams. Wouldn’t it be something if both teams were on the bubble on Selection Sunday and one spot was remaining between the two?